1. Field of the Invention
Example embodiments of the present invention relate semiconductor apparatuses and substrate processing methods, for example, a substrate processing apparatus for converting ions into neutral beams and a method for the same.
2. Description of Related Art
Related art methods for fabricating semiconductor devices may use plasma. For example, plasma may be used for a deposition process, an etching process and/or an annealing process. Thin films may be deposited and/or patterned on a semiconductor wafer and heating processes may be performed. In related art semiconductor device fabrication, a plasma process may be performed using a plasma processing apparatus
Related art plasma processing apparatuses may use, for example, a chemical vapor deposition method, a plasma annealing method and/or a dry etching method.
With the increased integration of semiconductor devices, processing conditions of a semiconductor processing apparatuses may be increasingly stricter. As a result, performance of related art plasma processing apparatuses has been continuously improved. For example, a density of the plasma and/or increasing the uniformity of plasma distribution has been improved.
However, plasma may be limited in basic characteristics. For example, plasma may be limited because plasma is a charged particle. The charge of the plasma may cause, for example, transforming a substrate or a surface of a specific material layer of the substrate into an amorphous layer and/or changing a chemical composition of a substrate surface layer. Additionally, a dangling bond may be generated in the substrate surface layer, charge-up damage of a gate insulating layer may be caused and/or electrical damage may be caused by notching of a polysilicon layer due to charging of photoresist.
In the above and other related art methods of semiconductor fabrication, ions in the plasma may be converted into neutral beams. The ions may be neutralized, for example, using a method of colliding ions with neutrons, electrons or a metal plate.
In one example, related art system, plasma may be generated by a plasma gun and reflected by a neutralizing plate to generate the neutral particles. The neutralizing plate may be mounted so as to have an adjustable angle. The ions may be deflected from a scan direction using the neutralizing plate and may be directed toward a substrate to be processed. The substrate to be processed may be mounted in a direction inclined by an angle with respect to an incident direction of the ions incident on the neutralizing plate. In this example, when the semiconductor fabricating process is performed using this system, ensuring process uniformity may be increasingly difficult. For example, when an etching process is performed, it may be difficult to ensure etching uniformity.